The Voice in the Casino

Discipline. That's what it's all about. Discipline.

I get the urge to go to the casino a couple of times a year. Typically I indulge it once. Yesterday was that day, I hope, anyway, for 2026.

There's a small casino in Hessel, in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, just up the road a piece from our second home there. It isn't a very big gambling den. I've seen Seven Elevens that are larger in fact. But it's close by when we're in da U.P. and the small size has its charm. 

Typically I play video poker. I know the odds are in the house's favor with any type of gambling (me Pops always said that the winners didn't build the casinos), and perhaps I'm playing a stupid psychological trick on myself, but with poker I feel I have at least a modest amount more control over the game. I can choose what to hold and play hunches, for whatever tiny advantages those strategies may offer. With straight out slot machines, you just pull a lever (push a button these days) and hope.

My budget is twenty bucks. Once that's gone, I'm gone. You can play for as long as an hour on that if you're judicious, and have a bit of luck. Usually I quit when I'm 10-15 dollars behind. That's when I tell myself that this is stupid and cash out what's left.

Yesterday my $20 was gone in about five minutes. Sighing heavily, I thought, heck, I'm on vacation. I'll play another twenty. That's pretty much how the casinos want you to think I'm sure, and for whatever reason gullibility took over. I fed the machine another Jackson.

It was gone relatively soon, although I managed about 20 minutes of play that time around. Mildly upset at myself for losing forty bucks, I started to leave. "Put in another $20," the voice in my head told me.

"Why? I'm already down $40."

"Just put in another twenty," I was assured.

Half disgusted that I was allowing me to talk myself into something stupid, I gave the poker machine another greenback. I hit the draw button and was dealt four kings, a thirty dollar win at the level I was playing. That gave me a $49 credit. "Now cash out," that same voice told me.

I did. That left me 11 dollars down, within my usual loss range. 

You can play games at a casino, and you can listen to the voice in your head. But they each require discipline. That's the key.

The Ballot Proposals which Failed

We know that there are 6 ballot proposals facing Michigan voters this November. Yet how many people realize that there were 9 more that were, for one reason or another, not included on the upcoming ballot? We don't necessarily know why each was rejected, but that really doesn't matter right now. What is interesting is that sometimes the things which don't make it are more interesting than the ones which do.

An initiative on expanding casino gaming was scrapped by a ruling of the Michigan Supreme Court. But that was one of two which dealt with new casinos; this demonstrates that gambling has become a big business around here. Yet it ignores the issue of how much is too much, and we're probably just as well without having to consider the question ourselves.

Two other rejected ideas involved the structure of government: one would have abolished the State Senate, while the other would have enshrined the right of the people to alter or abolish government. Interesting ideas, both. Yet both are better off off the ballot. There's nothing particularly wrong with a two house legislature, and don't we have the right to 'alter or abolish' government as it is?

Another proposed amendment would have made horizontal hydraulic fracturing for oil illegal. Come now, why would we want to do that? We need oil, and fracking is safe. This is just a liberal scare mongering tale which has no business as part of our State's highest law. We must be very, very slow about having a Constitution dictating how and why to get energy. It would have only tied the hands of our legislature in an area where it ought to be making decisions.

One proposal would have banned union dues as a condition of employment. We would have liked for that one to have approved. There's always been something underhanded about a group of people claiming to represent your best interests but, as is often the case, against your will. With your money and my brains, we can change the world; how can that not sound suspect? Yet it didn't make the ballot, and that's too bad. It's one we would really have liked to see voted upon.

Any way you slice it, for all the complaining about this November's initiatives clogging up the state Constitution, it could have been worse. We might have had another 9 to consider. Seeing that, perhaps we are lucky to have only what we have.